• Sunday afternoon "Gleeman and The Geek" will be broadcasting live from the Minnesota State Fair at the KFAN booth near the grandstand. We're doing an extended two-hour show from 4-6 p.m. and there are bleachers set up so people can hang out, eat food, and watch the show, so it would be great to to see some podcast listeners and blog readers there.

• I've had a running bit on Twitter this season in which I tweet out "Glen Perkins, proven closer" after he converts a save. It's part appreciating how great Perkins has been and part mocking the silliness about the Twins needing a so-called "proven closer" when they traded for Matt Capps. Perkins and his wife Alisha Perkins have done a lot of charitable work with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and now they're selling "Proven Closer" t-shirts to raise money:

As you can see, in addition to the "proven closer" label it also features a sketch of Perkins zipping up his fly, which he did mid-save earlier this season. I think it's a funny shirt being sold to benefit a great cause by a pair of good people, so I highly encourage everyone to join me in buying one.

• Every row of this picture from 2001 adds a new dimension of fun. Row 1: Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. Row 2: Jennifer Lopez and Chris Judd. Row 3: Jimmy Kimmel, Triumph The Insult Comic Dog, and Carson Daly. Row 4: Fred Durst. What a time to be alive. I started blogging the next year.

• I'm very late to the party, but after recently discovering Jason Isbell's music I've downloaded every song and am pretty much listening to him non-stop. He's coming to Minnesota in October to play the Varsity Theater--where I saw stand-up comedians John Mulaney and Carmen Lynch be hilarious this spring--and I think we should all go. Together, even, if you know me in real life.

• Just missing the cut at No. 25: "Wanna try to get a date on the radio at the State Fair?"

• St. Cloud Rox employee Michael Johnsonfound some footage of our party bus outing in June.

• One of the more mind-boggling responses to criticism that I've ever seen: "I've got a wall full of plaques from various writing awards in my home office. If you'd like I can list them for you."

• Alan Sepinwallinterviewed "Parks and Recreation" creator and former baseball blogger Mike Schur about his new show, "Brooklyn Nine-Nine." Schur is great and the cast includes longtime AG.com favorites Chelsea Peretti and Andre Braugher, so I'm really looking forward to it.

• On this week's episode we asked listeners to submit some designs for a potential "Gleeman and The Geek" t-shirt and so far I've received three of them. You can see one here and one here, and here's the third one just because I think it's the most amusing:

In a lot of ways that might be the most accurate portrayal of two people ever, but for now at least we'll keep looking. I'm offering $50 and a free t-shirt to the creator of any design we use, so if you want to put your skills to work please e-mail me.

• There's a lot of really good comedy coming to Minnesota soon. Nick Offerman will be at Mill City Nights on February 18, Tom Segura will be at Acme Comedy Company on February 23, and Bill Burr will be at the State Theatre on March 23. My dad has had a "poker club" for around 50 years and I'm thinking about starting a "going to comedy shows" club.

• Mystic Lake is also opening up a new comedy club in addition to the big showroom where I saw Artie Lange, Dave Attell, Jim Norton, and Amy Schumer a couple months ago. I'm sensing an oncoming battle between my love of stand-up comedy and my love of not leaving the house.

• I watched the fascinating, well done, and weird documentary/mystery "The Imposter," which tells the incredible story of a 13-year-old from Texas who went missing in 1994 and was found four years later in Spain, reuniting with his family. Or so it seemed. An artfully layered narrative of interviews, news accounts, and dramatic recreations shows nothing was as it appeared, from the disappearance to the return to the family's reaction. Highly recommended.

• Jonathan Abrams of Grantland has quickly become one of my favorite long-form writers and his latest gem is about the intertwined careers of Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse.

• Save the date: Twins Daily is planning a post-Twins Fest get-together on January 26 at Hubert's across from the Metrodome. I might be there doing some podcasting and I'll definitely be there doing some drinking.

• For some reason Louis Amundson botching the layup in the middle of a blowout loss makes this Ricky Rubio pass even more ridiculous.

Through his first seven games back Rubio has 25 points and 35 assists.

• "Gleeman and The Geek" listeners who enjoy when we're interrupted by a drunk person will be delighted by this week's episode, which also included Parker Hageman of Twins Daily joining me for a lengthy discussion of the Twins' involvement in sabermetrics.

• On a related note, I highly recommend the buffalo chicken panino at Panino Brothers in Eden Prairie. It was so good that I barely regretted going off my strict calorie limit and only forced myself to go twice as long as usual on the elliptical machine afterward.

• This tweet is more or less Twitter in a nutshell, complete with the inevitable your/you're error and so much more.

• Thinking someone is great looking is a powerful thing. For instance, I paid to watch Emily Blunt in "Salmon Fishing In The Yemen." And it wasn't bad!

• I'm pretty convinced that it will rank somewhere between incredibly embarrassing and utterly humiliating, but at Paul Allen's urging and in the name of good radio "Girls Gone Gleeman" is a dating game-style show that's going to happen on KFAN live from the state fair next month. I'll pass along full details later, but in the meantime you can listen to us brainstorming on the air yesterday (mixed in with a bunch of Twins talk during an hour-long segment).

• Based on this St. Paul Pioneer Pressheadline for Ben Goessling's article, the Twins now have the same problem that's plagued bloggers.

• Movie recommendation: The Prestige, which is the film Christopher Nolan directed in between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. It somehow flew under my radar until now, but has a few of the usual Nolan favorites in an interesting story and is well worth a $1.99 rental on Amazon.

• Every day hundreds of people arrive at AG.com via search engine queries and most of them are Googling stuff like "Gleeman" or "Twins blog." I'm also amused by the weird and seemingly random searches that lead people here, so here are some of my favorites from this week:

• Otis Redding is my favorite musician of all time and the amazing thing about the quality and depth of his work is that he died in a plane crash at age 26. His music is often the soundtrack to my writing and it never ceases to make me sad when I think about how many great songs we missed out on. Today would have been his 70th birthday and to celebrate I'll be listening to non-stop Otis. Whether you're a fellow fan or unfamiliar with him, give these songs a try:

• And if you haven't listened to this week's podcast yet, click here. It was a fun/weird one.

• My latest weight-loss effort reached the sixth-month mark Wednesday and I'm very happy to report that I'm down 102 pounds. That sounds impressive and it was definitely hard work, but without question the biggest key to losing 102 pounds in six months is being really, really fat to begin with. I also still have lots more work to do, so anyone who sees me can't be blamed for thinking: "Wait, he still looks like this after losing 102 pounds?!"

Because of all that I'm always sort of embarrassed to talk about losing weight, but hopefully it serves as motivation for me to keep going and maybe even for other people to make a change as well. Certainly if I can do it, you can do it. I didn't have any surgeries or go on any extreme diets, so simply cutting way back on calorie intake and working out on an elliptical machine for a half-hour or so each day can have a significant impact. Now we'll see if I can avoid relapsing.

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is the King of Soul performing "You Left The Water Running":

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